


Blue Fire

by doctorhelena



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 21:32:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7008958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorhelena/pseuds/doctorhelena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peggy and Steve get a bit distracted on a mission with the Howling Commandos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blue Fire

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Steggy Positivity Week 2016 - Day 1: Wartime.

Peggy forced herself to stay motionless as the boots of the Hydra patrol echoed closer and closer to the alcove she had pressed herself into. She’d been interrupted before she could finish searching the office, but the schematics she’d managed to shove into her bag were going to keep Howard busy for a while.

She tightened her grip on the pistol as the patrol marched past her – only four men, and they hadn’t seen her yet. It was only a faint noise from somewhere at the far end of the corridor that made the last man turn and spot her, and then she was too busy fighting for her life to investigate its source.

She used the advantage of surprise to shoot the two closest men before they could raise their weapons, and then she was diving across the hall, taking the third man out at the knees, barely redirecting the arc of blue flame from his weapon into his colleague instead of her. As the fourth man flared up blue and vanished, she rolled with the shooter and pinned back his weapon arm, kneeing him hard in the groin and then slamming her pistol across his jaw before he could recover.

His grip on his weapon slackened and she swatted it away as she rolled up into a crouch to survey the situation, breathing hard. One man unconscious, two dead, and the fourth gone, vaporized into whatever became of those unlucky enough to get in the way of a Hydra flame thrower. And at the end of the hall Steve and Dugan were jogging forward to meet her.

“You blew my cover and then just stood there?” she asked, a slight reprimand in her tone, handing them the weapons from the two dead soldiers and taking the third for herself, stowing her own pistol in her bag.

“What? You looked like you had things under control,” said Dugan, grinning at her. “You against four guys – seemed like a fair fight to me.” He glanced down at the men on the floor and shrugged. “Actually, by the time we realized what was happening, the whole thing was pretty much over. You took ‘em down pretty fast. They definitely didn't see that coming.”

“A good rule of thumb is to never get on Peggy’s bad side,” said Steve, grinning too.

Despite his smile, she could hear the unsteadiness he was trying to hide, and when she caught his eye his face was an unguarded blend of relief and desire that held her mesmerized for a long moment. At times like this she could almost see the energy crackling between them, that desperate, intense attraction that she’d never come close to feeling with Fred.

“Status?” she asked finally, her voice somewhat throatier than she had intended.

Dugan rolled his eyes. “Well, I was going to double back and make sure Gabe and Dernier didn’t have any trouble rigging the last of the explosives, but I’m not sure if it’s safe to leave the two of you alone together.” He folded his arms over his chest. “You both seem a little distracted.” He raised an eyebrow.

Peggy drew herself up and glared at him. “I’m quite sure I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said haughtily, willing herself not to blush. She and Steve really were getting distracted by each other far too easily lately. Maybe Howard was right, and they did just need to get it out of their systems, although she knew very well that this went far beyond the physical.

Dugan shrugged. “Well, we’ve got about fifteen minutes before this place goes boom. So get whatever else you need to get, and then get out.”

“Roger that,” she said, and Dugan nodded and disappeared back down the corridor. She turned to Steve, focus back on the mission. “If we go out via the far staircase, we’ll pass almost directly by the armory. I think it’s worth checking out.”

“Distract, grab, and run?” asked Steve, and Peggy nodded. He considered. “Let’s take a look at the guard situation first. We don’t have a lot of time.”

She made a face, but then nodded. “All right. Come on.” She led the way carefully towards the staircase, acutely aware of Steve close behind her, keeping the building diagram she’d seen on the office wall firmly fixed in her mind. When they heard footsteps approaching from around the corner, she pulled him into what she hoped had been accurately labelled as a storage room and pulled the door shut behind them.

Thankfully, the room did indeed appear to be used for storage, and luckily nobody had chosen that moment to look for paper or cleaning supplies. It was clearly a repurposed office, much too large to be a closet, shelves on the wall interspersed with file cabinets and a desk pushed up against the wall by the window. Peggy had imagined pulling Steve into a storage room more often than she would like to admit, but at the moment she was focused on Hydra. 

They pressed themselves against the wall on either side of the doorway, listening to the sounds from the corridor: the sudden crackle of a radio, followed by feet scuffling and a voice barking orders in German. The incapacitated patrol on the floor upstairs had been discovered, and Hydra knew they had visitors.

Peggy brought up her weapon and Steve did the same, but the footsteps moved away down the corridor. Peggy leaned over to speak quietly in Steve’s ear. “They’ve discovered the mess we left upstairs.” Steve nodded. His German was nowhere near as good as hers, but she wasn’t surprised he’d gotten the gist of what was going on.

“New plan?” he asked.

She nodded. “We create a diversion for the others, and then we go out the window.”

Steve moved over to the window, leaned over the desk to open it, and looked down. Peggy hopped up onto the desk beside him and he moved over slightly so she could look out too. They were on the third floor, but the ground below was flat and clear of obstruction. “You can jump down that far,” she said, and he nodded.

“Grenades,” he said, pulling one from his belt.

She nodded, closing her fingers around one of her own. “On three,” she said, sliding silently off the desk and heading for the door, positioning herself just to the left. He nodded and followed her, poised and ready, just to the right. “One,” she said quietly, moving her hand to the doorknob and slowly turning it. “Two.” She eased the door open and listened. Nothing. “Three!” She pulled the pin on her grenade and tossed it down the corridor to the left, while Steve did the same on the right. She pulled the door gently shut behind them.

They ran for the window, Steve vaulting over the desk and sliding over the sill. The grenades went off as he lowered himself down the outside of the window ledge, and the rattle from the explosion rocked Peggy forward as she hopped up onto the desk.

Shouts rang out from the hallway behind her as Steve dropped down to the ground, and she slid over the sill, lowering herself down to hang by her hands on the outside of the building. “Ready!” called Steve, quietly, and she dropped without looking, into his arms. He caught her, a little more closely than was probably strictly necessary, squeezed her once, then set her down gently on the ground beside him.

They both scanned the area. “Go!” said Steve, and they both took off running, zigzagging across the clearing, stopping to regroup behind a large oak tree a little way into the forest. If they’d been spotted, they would need to fight from here, both to save themselves and to clear the way for the others.

Peggy leaned across Steve to peer cautiously around the tree trunk. “Looks clear,” she said after a moment, and only then, immediate danger past, did she realize how close together they were standing. Her hands were grasping his uniform for leverage, and their faces were inches apart.

 She could feel his breath, warm in her ear, and when he spoke it was with the unsteadiness he’d been trying to hide earlier in the hallway. “Peggy, when I saw that guy point his weapon at you and pull the trigger…”

“I know,” she said, turning to face him, so close that their breath mingled together in the cool air. She opened her mouth to speak, closed it again, then wordlessly leaned forward and brushed her lips against his. He froze for a second and then kissed her back, a small involuntary-sounding noise from his throat warming her all the way to her toes.

They stared at each other, and then she was grabbing fistfuls of his uniform jacket, pressing him back against the tree trunk with her entire body, and they were kissing rather desperately, fuelled by adrenalin and survival and the sheer elation of finally acting on something they’d both wanted for a very long time. This was it, she realized. There was no going back, not when kissing him felt like this.

She had not quite forgotten where they were, though, and she pulled back abruptly as she heard a noise from the clearing. She peered cautiously around the tree. Dernier, Dugan, and Jones were running out of the Hydra base, looking back over their shoulders for signs of pursuit.

“They’re out. Let’s go,” she said, and Steve blinked, mouth half-open, a little slower to change gears. He stared at her for a moment, then took a steadying breath, nodded, and joined her, darting through the woods back to where the others were waiting with the truck.

 “Get anything good back there?” asked Dugan, coming up beside her at a jog.

She could feel her cheeks grow hot, then realized what he meant. “I didn’t have time to look too closely,” she said, “but I think the schematics I got, along with the weapons we took off the Hydra soldiers, should keep Howard happy for a while.”

Dugan grinned. “For at least an hour or so.”

Barnes came running up, having left his sniper nest once everyone was clear, and they all dove into the back of the truck. Falsworth, up front with Morita, gunned the engine, and the acceleration sent everyone sprawling. Peggy found herself in a rather compromising positon with Jones, who grinned at her as she rolled off him. “You gotta work on your aim, Peggy. Cap’s over there.”

She gave him a look, but settled herself next to Steve nonetheless, as the rest of the Commandos untangled themselves and found  comfortable positions and Dernier counted down to the explosion. “Trois, deux, un, ZERO!”

Under cover of the blast, Peggy leaned over and spoke into Steve’s ear. “We’ll talk back at base,” she said, nudging him almost imperceptibly with her knee. “I think it may be time that we…reassess… some earlier decisions given newly available data and recent events.”

He grinned and started to say something, but she sat up straight, interrupting him, eyes widening. “Steve, you have lipstick on your mouth.”

He blushed a deep red and hastily wiped it off. Peggy closed her eyes for a moment, sent off a short but fervent prayer, and opened them again, covertly looking around at the others in the back of the truck.

Most of the Commandos were still enthusiastically revisiting the finer points of the explosion and didn’t seem to have noticed anything. Barnes, though, was looking straight at them, eyebrows raised.

She stared back at him, defiant. He winked at her, then gave Steve a thumbs up.

“Well, fuck,” Peggy said with feeling, the profanity slipping through her usual filter. Steve snorted.

“Thought maybe we’d talk first,” he said with a grin. “But, you’re the lady.”

Peggy sighed, then grinned back at him. There was no use crying over spilt milk, and the Commandos could be relied upon to keep a secret.

 “Well, we can start with talking,” she said, “and move on from there.”

 


End file.
